


Violet

by TheSushiMonster



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:57:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1213534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSushiMonster/pseuds/TheSushiMonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You and I collide on a Wednesday afternoon, before dinner and after dark, when the sky is painted pink and gold; it matches your blouse." Simmons is glass and Fitz is the reflection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Violet

You are an intricately designed map of bone and texture, rotating over the web of complexities tangled by the world: you are glass.

The crystalline formation of your bones defines the edges between smile and laugh. You are a curiosity and the curious, the cosmic energies in your eyes glittering with every discovery. When your mother is proud and your father pleased, you are laughing at the trees. For the trees are red and green and brown, steady and firm, but your laugh is a pale pink, matching your cotton frock, and it dances with insects and the ink in your new books. Those spines are already cracked and pages are already frayed; your fingers leave trails of golden dust that scatter back into the crevices of your mind. You absorb and you associate and you learn and you learn until all that you can  _do_  is learn some more so that one day you may also be able to do.

In the meld of blues and greens that embrace your soul, you nurse a propensity to fix. You sweep away the fallen crumbs of food that your mother accidently drops and you hold your friend together when she weeps. You fix and you mend and when chemical compounds become your best friend, you fix those too: because chemicals react logically and you  _know_  how to fix those. It's a silver thread that wraps around your limbs and your nerves, tightening each day, and sometimes you wonder what would happen if it snapped – but it never does and you just let it keep twisting around your heart, binding it in place.

Sometimes, when the thread pulls too hard and crystals of your glass melt away along your cheeks and you taste the acrid navy salt along your tongue, you think it hurts more in the space between your thumb and forefinger on your left hand. It throbs here more than in your heart or your head and sometimes you wonder why that is. It's simple anatomy and you research and you discover but it's an anomaly that doesn't quite make sense so you suppose there are organic atoms in that tiny place that just don't belong to you. It's annoying how often the ebb and flow of tension rests within the inch of muscle; one moment dark red, another a sparkling white, another a murky yellow. A constant rainbow of tumultuous emotions race across this one inch of skin; but it's a nagging voice in the back of your mind as you study and discover and research. Eventually you smile and graduate, and one day you are defending your dissertation, and the next you have your first PhD, the pages reflecting gold.

You wonder why an ocean of lavender laced doubt sinks into this inch of skin and throbs painfully the day you receive an official envelope, sharp wings and fancy letters. Your fingers leave trails of pink and yellow and green, and you blink to stop the explosion of shattered glass behind your eyelids. When you open your eyes, wringing your hands, your right thumb runs over your left palm and the pain recedes for the moment into a haze of silvery blue: the atoms in your organic body are screaming and crying and ready for this adventure, but you just aren't quite sure.

* * *

 

I am the reflection.

When the universe exploded, I was cold and small, and I spun around the fire and ash until settling in your hands. You smiled and blew me away, so I drifted until I blinked; when I woke up, I was no longer cold and no longer small. Yet you were no longer there.

I like to think there is a blueprint with my face and name, grease-covered fingerprints crushing the corners in a black and navy border. Inside the gridlocked outline, I glare and I smirk, fingers twisted around a rod of orange smoke. My mother laughs and cries in intervals of yellow and gray and dresses me in button-up shirts of blue and charcoal. She sighs and smiles with bright blue eyes and I see the reflection of myself in her. She tries, but her lips are ill-fit around the words; misshapen and clashing, the foreign tongue of numbers and edges sounds too awkward. So I squeeze her hand and squeeze the levers and squeeze the nails into my pocket when the man turns away. There's a path of dreams and silver, but it's paved in pebbled black-holes and I learn to skip over them.

Between the flames and wrapped in golden chains, I let pieces click together and the gears squeak; it smells like engine grease and sometimes the wires tangle around my fingers and embed into the callouses. I fail, let the electricity burn away strands of hair or layers of skin; I succeed and watch the steady yellow light burn away the red and green acid crawling between skin tissues. It's trial and error and my chart is filled with more red scratches than green checks, but those successes build on the failures and I try and try and do – it's all a puzzle and when it works, it's another notch etched and note filed away.

But there are many crevices carved by the wooden spear; and sometimes I wonder if the hole in my knee is one of them. In the gap between left cap and tendon, there is space; something is missing and I want it back. Most days the pain is dull, a steady stream of light reds and intense blues and silent green fires; but there are moments when it flares and I stumble, eyelids screaming of fraying threads with the wick catching on a flame.

The gear in my head is probably a time bomb, counting down seconds until my reflection catches its breath, and the world and everything explodes. The steady, persistent  _tick tock tick tock_  is a metronome; most days, the throbbing, insistent ache in my knee mirrors this drop of time, another deadline I don't care about and I don't bother to write down. It's just my hands and fingers and nails coated in dark red ink, caked in sweat and leather. I only need to cut the blue wire, not the red, and slice the insulation of the green one, exposing brilliant copper to vivid pink –

The day a tall man arrives in a dark suit, a packet of torn and blood orange stained papers in his arms, I lean my elbows on my thighs, my thumb massaging my left knee, letting the blood flow call out to it's missing piece. The atoms are alight with yearning, and time slows for the moment, the  _tick tock tick tock_  of gears clicking together stalling; the electric field is realigning with this man's words, with his solemn smile. My eyes keep gravitating to the booklet in his hands, the title so familiar and previously hidden between boxes of dirt and possibly bio-hazardous material. But the magnets are pointing east and maybe, when the man smiles and nods, typed lettering interrupted with yellow-tinted dots, I'm heading west.

* * *

 

You and I collide on a Wednesday afternoon, before dinner and after dark, when the sky is painted pink and gold; it matches your blouse.

Despite the pleasantly even room, you are cool against me, arm in front of my chest as you search through my notes. I'm radiating fire and you are water; I'm the reflection of your wide-eyes as you sing the song of science. Your words are poetry: chemical compounds rhyme and reactions alliterate and anatomical mappings repeat and suddenly you're grinning.

When the universe starts, everything is nothing; but when you smile, I am everything and you are my reflection because you are the light weaved around electrons spinning continuously around each other. The hole in my knee and the inch of skin on your palm are clicking –  _tick tock tick tock_  – in a haphazard pattern that follows the Fibonacci equation in convergence. I try to tell you to not judge me, but you're enamored with the scrawls and the designs and I stop. Your revelation is a forgotten prophecy, my understanding is a new success, and together you and I draw a rainbow spiral around the unsung problem until it laughs with light.

You are not bounded to the extremes that I am; but I am not prone to heroics. Together, you bump your shoulder into mine and I sigh deeply; your noose loosens into a tether and my bomb is now an alarm, and when I ask you a question, you answer in pastel tones.

So when your left hand rests on my left knee, it's a cosmic event; because the thread frays just a little and the gears stop all together – the  _tick tock tick tock_  is bound by the red and gold string, a tangled web naturally knotted without hope to undo – and your pink meets my blue. You nod, I smile, and as you move your thumb along my knee, we are royal violet, and everything begins.


End file.
